Joseph Joubert Quotes

What is style? For many people, a very complicated way of saying very simple things. According to us, a very simple way of saying very complicated things.

Oh child, your language is so utterly simple and limited that it has the affect of extreme complication. -Aunt Beast

It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated.

I admire writers who can make complicated things simple, but my own talent has been to make simple things complicated.

A good author, and one who writes carefully, often discovers that the expression of which he has been in search without being able to discover it, and which he has at last found, is that which was the most simple, the most natural, and which seems as if it ought to have presented itself at once, without effort, to the mind.

There is no obligation on us to be richer, or busier, or more efficient, or more productive, or more progressive, or any way worldlier or wealthier, if it does not make us happier.

Intellectuals say simple things in difficult ways. Artists say difficult things in simple ways.

When I asked my mother, ‘how do I tell people about you’ her answer was ‘tell the truth’. But of course, the truth is never simple.

My natural tendency is to complicate everything--and then to spray words and ideas onto everything afterwards. I've had to develop the habit of keeping things simple.

It's really complex to make something simple.

You know how you let yourself think that everything will be all right if you can only get to a certain place or do a certain thing. But when you get there you find it's not that simple.

I would like a simple life / yet all night I am laying / poems away in a long box.

The Simple Life is not a simple life.

It's all very simple, or else it's all very complex, or perhaps it's neither, or both.

Between the semi-educated, who offer simplistic answers to complex questions, and the overeducated, who offer complicated answers to simple questions, it is a wonder that any questions get satisfactorily answered at all.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!

Enjoy simple things with total intensity. Just a cup of tea can be a deep meditation.

I must try, however, as best I can, although I am very conscious of the fact that our feelings and strivings are often contradictory and obscure and that they cannot be expressed in easy and simple formulas.

Keep it simple: own as little as you can get away with, schedule everything, keep a notebook, don't let technology enslave you.

Nature's way is simple and easy, but men prefer the intricate and artificial.

Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.

Mindfulness creates centered awareness. When you do one thing at a time, you're guaranteed excellent results. If you do too many things simultaneously, it messes up your neural circuits. Focus on one thing at a time.

The method of science depends on our attempts to describe the world with simple theories: theories that are complex may become untestable, even if they happen to be true. Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification-the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit.

To the scientist, the universality of physical laws makes the cosmos a marvelously simple place. By comparison, human nature-the psychologist's domain-is infinitely more daunting.

It's simple until you make it complicated.